Emerson, Thoreau and Usefulness

Here is an assignment I had for my English 2400, American Literature class today.

Self-Reliance 2008

“A sturdy lad form Vermont or New Hampshire, who in turn tries all the professions, who team it, farms it, peddles, keeps a school, preaches, edits a newspaper, goes to Congress, buys a township, and so forth, in successive years, and always like a cat, falls on his feet, is worth a hundred of these city dolls.”
Emerson
I see young men, my townsmen, whose misfortune it is to have inherited farms, houses, barns, cattle, and farming tools: for these are more easily acquired than got rid of.”
Thoreau
Even the most polymathic, dexterous, open-ended individual is, after all, just one guy. He might retreat to Walden Pond for the simple life alone with a hoe, but if he dwells among mankind, he’ll need a veritable Gutenberg Galaxy of tools.
Sterling
This author has taken the transcendentalist ideals and tried to interpret them in a framework for our day. He suggests that in our modern day, a hoe, a wheelbarrow, an axe, is not enough to get by with. He goes on to say that if Thoreau were still at the pond, he would at least have a Leatherman Multi-Tool because they have “a certain tight-mouthed, implacable Yankee quality. They’re a state of mind.”
He next suggests the Apple iPhone as the “post-millennial version of the Leatherman.” It devours other tools: phone, camera, e-mail, Web browser, text-messaging, music, video players, whole plant-girdling sets of urban Google maps, house keys, pedometer, TV remote, seismometer, Breathalyzer, alarm clock, video games, radio, bar-code scanner…the list grows by the day.”
What about us, in our world. We might want to live in the world of ideas and nature, but we have to eat, every day. What tools do we use that inevitably feed us? What tools do we use to get along in the world? The tools we use to feed and clothe ourselves depend on the situations and professions we choose or find ourselves in. If this is true, it looks like everyone under 25 years of age has chosen to feed themselves by the creation, consumption and digestion of banal information. I have seen young men trying to dig a hole with a shovel. It is a pathetic sight. But, they are very good text-messagers, video game players and YouTube watchers. That doesn’t seem very useful to me. But, maybe I am just an old lady. It makes me wonder who will be feeding these people and their hungry families in the future. What marketplace are they preparing to enter? Who will be able to come up with authentic ideas and ways to live? It is important to remember that there was no cell phone coverage, PS2 , or internet connection at Walden Pond.